My local running club, Club athlétique Veynois put on a double-header race every April. La Bombarde is the 10km road race that I’ve run several times, but they also host an (almost) Vertical KM race called Montée d’Oule, that climbs Mont d’Oule on the outskirts of Veynes in the Hautes-Alpes.
Montée d’Oule
Mont d’Oule rises 850m above the town of Veynes in the southern French Alps and has a panoramic view from the top. Since the path to the top is barely 3km long, the average gradient is almost 30% so its a very steep slog.
The race began at 5pm and took the form of a time trial, or contre-la-montre, with competitors setting off in 30 second increments.
I decided to travel light and ditched my pack and water bottle and just attempted this with trekking poles. Almost immediately my throat was like sandpaper as I gasped for air. The afternoon was hot and sunny and the air was dry.
I managed to overtake about three people in front of me, and was only overtaken by one other person (who in my defence was half my age) who came trotting past as if this was a warm up for Parkrun.
A sub-40 minute time was my goal, based on nothing more scientific than a quick look at last year’s results. I succeeded, getting to the top in 39’02”, 21st overall and 5th in my category.
It was definitely worth it for the view. The panorama showed the Vercors, the nearby Dévoluy range, the snow-capped Ecrins as well as the foothills of Provence.
After admiring the view, a short trail led down to drinks and food.
Race results for Montée d’Oule 2017
La Bombarde
Nearly all my running is on trails these days but I’ve run La Bombarde two out of the last three years as I’m curious to see what my 10k PB is. It’s being getting steadily quicker over the years but that was when I didn’t prepare for it by running the Montée d’Oule the night before.
I guess it was therefore inevitable that I would break that trend and my time of 39’26” was my slowest ever but I was still happy with it. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I though the race started at 11, got up at 9.15, checked and realised it was a 10, dashed into the car and made it to the start line with 2 minutes to go. No warmup, no breakfast. Not recommended.
The combined time for both races was enough to get me onto the age-category podium for runners of both races. I’m not sure it was a large pool of potential runners though!
